US will not support Palestinian draft UN resolution

The United States will not support a draft resolution submitted to the UN that demands Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian lands, according to a US official Anadolu agency reported. “We have seen the draft of the resolution in the UN Security Council and it is not something that we would support,” said Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman. The draft submitted Wednesday night by Jordan to the Security Council, sets a deadline of 2017 for the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from land it seized in 1967.

Palestinian-American diplomat Riyad H. Mansour, the Permanent Observer for Palestine to the UN, said despite the position of the US, the effort will continue in order to get the Security Council to adopt language to move forward.

“We will continue negotiating with all of them and with the Americans if they are ready and willing so that we perhaps can succeed in having something adopted by the Security Council to open a serious door to peace,” he said.

The draft resolution further seeks “a just, lasting, comprehensive and peaceful solution [to the conflict] that brings an end to the Israeli occupation.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called the draft an “act of aggression.”

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date to 1917, when the British government, in the now-famous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

Palestinians want a state of their own in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem, currently occupied by Israel, as its capital.